Alice Cooper's tribute to 'dead drunk friends'

The Hollywood Vampires' debut album will be a tribute to Alice Cooper's "dead drunk friends".

The 67-year-old rocker was a founding member of a group of musicians including Harry Nilsson, John Lennon and Keith Moon, who dubbed themselves The Hollywood Vampires and came together at The Rainbow on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip to form a drinking club almost 50 years ago.

And when Alice and his current Hollywood Vampires bandmate Johnny Depp decided to make a covers record, he chose to dedicate it to his pals who have all since passed away.

He told Rolling Stone: "We started saying, 'Let's do an album', I'd never done a covers record so I said, 'I'd like to do one in memory of all our dead drunk friends, the guys that we used to drink with that are now gone.'

"It was a bunch of guys. I told Johnny, 'They're all dead now. Let's do an homage to them.'"

The now teetotal star added: "If any guy is allowed to make an album about his dead drunk friends, it would be me. 33 years ago, I came as close to joining them as possible without doing it. I'm a survivor."

Joe Perry was staying on Johnny's estate while the duo were recording and it wasn't long before he joined the band.

He said: "I was staying literally next door to his studio. So when I would finish working on the book, I would just wander over and they would be doing sessions. Johnny said, 'Hey, you wanna be part of this?' I was like, twist my arm, this was so great.

Alice added: "Joe would come down and start playing, and I went, 'There's the band, right there. We've got two guitar players that sing, now we need a drummer and a bass player.' And then everybody started emerging. We just rocked it."